


Hunters and Predators

by Cattraine



Series: Dark Moon (M7 AU) [1]
Category: Supernatural, Teen Wolf (TV), The Losers (2010), The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Crossover, M/M, Mild Gore, Not Beta Read, Vampires, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-21 23:28:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9571658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cattraine/pseuds/Cattraine
Summary: Hunters and Vampires and Wolves and Shifters, oh my!





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linderhill](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=linderhill).



> I started this fic way back in 2009 and it languished in my WIP folder forever, and I would pull it out and prod it with a stick periodically. The premise started out a lot different and morphed as time passed and more characters appeared. I can't say I am really satisfied with it, but I am done with the damned thing. It can be considered a stand alone or a timestamp in my Magnificent Seven/New Moon series.

Hunters and Predators

 

Dean Winchester awoke with a headache pounding behind his eyes and his head pillowed in a naked man’s lap. He gave a startled yelp of both pain and astonishment and rolled away as far as possible to thud up hard, back against the cage’s bars. 

Oh, yeah. Cage. Right, if he remembered correctly, that meant vampire nest, capture and the hunt for the… werewolf. The same werewolf currently seated calmly across from him, sharing the cage. Shit. Could things get any worse? He groaned and clutched his aching head. Sammy was never going to let him live this down. If he lived, that was.

“Hello, Dean. Finally awake? So good to see you again.”

He turned his head painfully to meet the female vampire’s familiar malicious smirk.

“Hello, Kate. Still dead, I see.”

“You’ve got a smart mouth Winchester, for someone locked in a cage, with the life expectancy of a juice box. The question is, where is baby brother? And will he be as tasty as I anticipate?”

“You keep the fuck away from my brother, bitch!”

Kate squatted on the other side of the cage bars, lips drawn back over sharp white piranha teeth. She was so pleased with herself that she was practically preening. Her new pack of minions moved restlessly behind her, probably getting bloodthirsty. From the slant of the sun outside the shadowy barn, it was late afternoon.

“Now, Dean, you really should watch your mouth…before I close it permanently.” Her slender hand blurred between the bars of the rebar cage, and her long nails dug painfully into his jaw, as she yanked his head around. 

Before she could do anything further, there was a snarl and a blur of motion and a furry head with blazing blue eyes and heavy jaws with sharp white teeth snapped shut on her forearm. She shrieked and whipped it back with inhuman reflexes, leaving her shredded, denim jacket sleeve in the wolf’s jaws. 

Dean kept very still, very aware of the large, furry lupine shape crowding between him and the vampire. His heart was pounding in sync with his head now. The man had been human one moment and a wolf the second and he had changed so fast that Dean hadn’t seen it.

Also, it wasn’t even a full moon night.

Kate glared at the wolf, shaking her arm out. The bloodless wounds were already healing.

“What are you? Don’t you know he would kill you? He’s a hunter! You are a prisoner here too, you know! You live because I choose to allow it!”

The wolf snarled in her face, hackles raised and teeth gleaming. Obviously he wasn’t impressed by her bluster.

She snarled back, not quite able to hide the bewildered look on her face as she stood. She took a breath, regaining her poise, and turned, motioning to her nest. 

“Dinner time, boys, and the main course is Winchester tonight. Where Dean is, Sam won’t be far behind. Tonight the Winchesters pay for Luther’s death.”

She gave Dean a wide smile, over her shoulder. 

“Shall I bring him back here and bleed him slow, so you can watch us feed on him? Shall I turn him? Make him my new consort? You want to watch that too, Dean?”

“Sam isn’t that easy to take down, and besides, he’s not into necrophilia, you undead skank.”

Kate raised her hand to her lips and deliberately licked his blood off the tips of her manicured nails, gave him another smirk.

“We’ll see.”

She turned and swaggered out, followed by her nest of minions. They were mainly male and obviously had been chosen for looks and brawn instead of brains.

“Leave my brother alone, bitch! I will off you all! I swear it!”

Her mocking laughter was all he heard.

“Goddammit!”

Dean pounded the thick bars of his prison with angry fists, terrified for his brother, forgetting for the moment that he was shoulder to shoulder with a werewolf. His cell and weapons were tantalizingly out of reach, piled carelessly with his wallet and other belongs on a stack of musty straw bales across the shadowed barn.

Said werewolf sat back on his haunches, tipped his head back and howled, long and deep, then waited a minute, ears pricked, before howling again. There was no response that Dean could hear.

Dean swallowed hard, and eased back into a corner of the cage, as far from the creature as he could get. It seemed his life was all about out of the frying pan and into the fire, lately. He stilled when the wolf lowered its head and turned clear blue eyes on him.

“Hi.” 

He said weakly, suddenly very much aware of the fact that he was badly concussed, bleeding and weaponless, as well as locked in a freaking cage with a vicious shapeshifter.

There was a blur in the air and suddenly a naked young man once again, crouched in front of him. 

He was about Dean’s age and handsome, with a square chiseled jaw, and had tangled, sun streaked brown hair that reached almost to the small of his back. His compact, well-muscled body was sun bronzed and scarred. He tilted his head again and regarded Dean with wide, blue eyes, nostrils flaring as he took in Dean’s scent.

“Hi,” he answered calmly.

“Huh, ah, my name is Dean Winchester.” Was this guy sniffing him?

“Vin Tanner.” The werewolf answered and politely held out a calloused palm.

Dean shook it before he thought. A small, shy smile quirked the corners of the werewolf’s full mouth, and Dean found himself smiling back. There was something guileless, almost innocent in the youthful face that eased the young hunter’s hackles. 

“Is it true? You hunt us?” Tanner asked cautiously, more curious then alarmed. The only hunter he had met was Cletus Fowler, but this man did not reek of the dead killer’s inner foulness. He smelled clean.

“We hunt evil things, my brother and I.” Dean explained hastily. 

“Actually we were hunting Kate and her nest. Sam read about some odd murders in the area and figured it was vampires. They drain all the blood out of their victims when they feed, and either let them die or turn them.”

Vin nodded thoughtfully. He and the pack had been looking for whoever had murdered a local Native girl from the res, after her naked, bloodless body was found dumped in a culvert along the highway, not far from Four Corners. The pack had feared another serial killer lurking near their territory. They were still vigilant after Cletus Fowler had nearly killed Vin last summer, and Chris now insisted on daily patrols.

Nathan and Rain who acted as the local coroners had both mentioned the strange stale blood scent that lingered on the girl’s mutilated corpse. He rubbed his nose at the thought, realizing now that it was probably the strong odor of rotten blood that clung to the vampires. The whole barn reeked of it. The vampires had apparently nested here for a while. This old, abandoned auction barn was a few miles outside of the pack’s patrol radius.

Vin had been patrolling along the river earlier when he came across Dean being attacked by Kate and her minions as he searched an old homestead. He had leapt into the fray himself, without thinking and gotten a crowbar across the back of the head for his pains. He had not been prepared for the unnatural strength and speed the vampires displayed. Chris was going to be really pissed when he found them. He scowled at that happy thought, not looking forward to explaining to his mate how he had ended up in a cage again.

Dean eased back into his corner of their prison, face wary and Vin realized he thought he was frowning at him. The other man was pale and a bit unsteady and stank of pain and blood and Vin remembered how Kate had ordered her minions to beat him to the ground. It had taken six burly male vampires to take Dean down, and he had gone down hard, fighting all the way. Two of the vampires were dead now, minus their heads and all the others wounded because Winchester knew how to use a machete in a fight.

He tilted his head and scented the air, but Dean wasn’t bleeding badly, so it must be the blow to the head that he had taken that was making him ill. Humans, he remembered, from Josiah and Nathan’s lectures, were more fragile then Lupini, nor did they heal as quickly. To Vin’s mind, humans had delicate tissue paper skin and bones as fragile as glass.

He sat down and wrapped his arms around his knees, back against the side of the wide iron bars of the cage, noticing that Dean relaxed slightly at the casual movement. He looked around their prison again. The cage had probably originally been a pen meant to hold livestock, but apparently the vampires had adapted it as a larder for their meals. The wide metal slats were too securely welded and bolted for Vin to pry apart and the door was chained shut with a log chain and heavy padlock. There was a thick layer of old straw on the floor, meant as bedding against the cold autumn night, and the lingering fear scent of humans. 

Something caught his eye and he reached out and pulled a narrow, red wool glove from beneath the straw. He examined it sadly. The woman who had worn it must have had very small hands.

“Hey…Um, dude, how do you change like that, without the moon?”

Dean’s hesitant question brought his head up, and he frowned, not understanding for a moment. What did the moon have to do with anything? Oh, now he remembered. Josiah had explained werewolf legends in great detail during his daily lessons and Buck had showed him some pretty hilarious movies.

“I’m not a werewolf. I am Lupini,” He said simply. 

It was too late to worry about pack law, and Dean had already seen him change. Plus, he realized, he really did not want this man to think of him as a mindless monster, preying on innocents while under the thrall of the moon. 

He wanted to know more about this Hunter, he realized, and to know more about the outside world. He had been restless these past few months, eager to learn new things, to see what was over the next hill. As much as he loved his mate and pack, he simply wasn’t used to staying in one place, and it was wearing on him. He had been a nomadic lone wolf all his life and was still adjusting to life with the pack and lately he had been snappish and irritable, even with his beloved mate.

Dean frowned. Lupini? What the fuck was a Lupini? He knew of werewolves and shapeshifters but neither Dad nor Bobby had ever said a word about Lupini. It unsettled him at how often new twists to old legends kept popping up. Maybe he was just getting old. He scowled at that thought. Sammy would laugh his ass off if he mentioned. The thought of his brother brought him back to reality with a jerk. He had to get the hell out of this cage before Kate and her nest found Sam.

He levered himself away from his safe corner and crawled past Vin to the cage door, ignoring the painful throb between his eyes and blurry vision.

Vin watched curiously as Dean groped and tugged on the chain that secured the door until he managed to get his hands on the padlock. The young man then dug a paperclip out of his shirt pocket and spent the next half hour determinedly trying to pick the sturdy Yale lock. It refused to yield. 

Dean swore viciously. “Fuck!” He punched the door again, ignoring his bruised knuckles. 

He had to get out of here. Sam’s life depended on it. While Sam could more than hold his own in an ordinary fight, he wasn’t expecting to be jumped and gang fanged by a nest of vampires. Four Corners was a small town, and Kate had his scent, they would be able to track him easily. He had to get out of here and warn his brother. Frustrated, he grabbed the bars and shook them viciously, wishing that he had his hands around Kate’s neck instead. If she laid one claw on Sam…

“Chris will be here soon.” Vin said quietly from behind him.

“What?” Dean turned, having almost forgotten his companion in his worry for his brother. “Who’s Chris?” he asked cautiously.

Vin tilted his head, in a listening angle, nostrils flaring as he scented the air.

“Chris is my mate.” He answered calmly.

Dean blinked; maybe it was about time he found out a bit more about Vin and his…pack?

“Um, your mate, is she coming alone? It could be dangerous for her. Those bloodsuckers aren’t playing around.”

Vin grinned broadly, eyes crinkling in amusement at the thought of Chris Larabee as female. He chuckled softly, imagining the look on his mate’s face at the very notion. The scowl on the blond Alpha’s face would be priceless to see. He sat back against the bars and laughed aloud, causing Dean to regard him quizzically.

“Did I say something funny?” he asked cautiously.

Vin, he noticed belatedly, was a really good-looking guy, werewolf or not.

“Chris isn’t a female.” Tanner answered, lips quirked.

“Huh.”

Was Dean’s articulate response, one hand rising to scratch at the nape of his neck in puzzlement. Great. He was locked in a cage with a naked gay werewolf, or Lupini, or whatever. His hand came back sticky with congealed blood from the substantial goose egg on the back of his head, and he scowled at it.

“Fucking bloodsuckers.” He growled, still worried about Sam. If those bastards laid one undead finger on his brother there would be hell to pay.

Vin cocked his head curiously.

“These vampires…they hunt in packs?”

Dean sat back against the cage with a weary sigh. His head felt like a woodpecker with a jackhammer had taken up residence inside his skull. He crossed his arms over his upraised knees and rested his dizzy head on them.

“Yeah, kind of like a pack. We call’ em nests because they tend to roost together during the daylight hours. They’re led by their sire—-the head vampire that turns them and he or she usually has a mate. They supposedly mate for life, and if they get your scent, they never forget it.”

Vin nodded thoughtfully, white teeth gnawing his lower lip.

“They are strong.”

“Yeah, and faster then humans too. Daylight slows them down some, and Dead Man’s Blood had a sedative effect, but to kill them you have to decapitate them or they’ll just heal up and come after you later.”

He didn’t mention the brief time he had spent as a vampire himself, he didn’t like to think about it. Thoughts of Benny in Purgatory caused a sharp stab of pain, and he knew he had to get him out of there soon, even if he had to drag him out kicking and screaming. Benny was too good for that place. He ruthlessly forced himself not to think of the vampire’s kind blue eyes and strong, protective arms…his Benny wasn’t a monster. Dean was begrudgingly beginning to realize that people like Vin were not monsters either.

Vin nodded again, absorbing the information. The next time he fought one of the vampires he would just have remember to bite through its neck vertebrae or rip its head off. No problem. He scooted a bit closer to Dean and sank down to sit Indian style, and leaned forward.

“Tell me more about the creatures you hunt.”

So Dean did, and that’s how they spent the remainder of the afternoon, as the sun shifted outside and the shadows lengthened inside the barn, sitting heads tilted together. The only sounds were Dean’s husky baritone and Vin’s soft drawl as he asked the occasional question.

7*7*7*7*7*7*7

In Four Corners, Sam pushed open the heavy wooden doors of the old adobe Mission style church and peered cautiously into its depths. Dean had been missing for hours, not answering his cell, and he feared the worse as it grew closer to sunset. One last frantic search of his father’s journal had produced the name of someone who might help in the area.

He stepped inside, senses alert in the evening gloom. The only light came from a multitude of votive candles flickering in glass jars on the altar and the setting sun in the colored glass of west side windows. A slight movement in the back of the nave caught his eyes. The man was tall, with broad shoulders.

“Father Sanchez?”

He asked softly, remembering the warning penciled in red in the margin of his father’s journal. Only if all else fails.

There was a deep answering rumble from the shadows and Sam felt the hair on his nape lift and a warning tingle shoot down his spine. He wasn’t a Hunter’s son for nothing and right now he felt as though he had just walked into a lion’s den. He widened his stance and braced himself, one hand dropping casually to the weapon hidden under his jacket.

“Yes, my son?”

The big priest rumbled as he stepped out of the shadows by the altar and the fading sunlight haloed his silver head and lit his striking pale blue eyes. He smiled and Sam took an involuntary step back towards the doors.

“Christo!”

The sharp, strangely feral smile the priest wore widened in amusement.

“I’m not a demon Samuel Winchester.” He said gently, big hands held palms up to demonstrate his harmlessness.

Sam wasn’t convinced as he calmly and smoothly leveled his Beretta at the man’s chest.

“How do you know my name then?”

Father Sanchez tilted his head towards the back of the church. 

“It’s a long story son, but I knew your father. Come on back and we’ll talk. I give my word that I won’t harm you.”

Sam hesitated, but curiosity won and he had no choice but to follow. Dean’s life might depend on this man. He followed, gun held steady and leveled at the big priest’s back. Sanchez led him to a tiny office at the back of the church crammed with ceiling high bookcases piled high with books and overflowing with stacks of paper. The monitor of an elderly computer glowed, half-buried under a teetering stack of hymnals on a heavy oak desk. The familiar scent of herbs, incense and old paper filled Sam’s nostrils and he relaxed slightly at the sight of a Devil’s Trap painted on the ceiling and the half full bag of rock salt lumped in the corner. This was the lair of a Hunter. He realized with a pang of grief that it reminded him of Bobby’s house and slowly lowered his firearm.

7*7*7*7*7*7*7

Ten miles south of Four Corners, Jacob Jensen cursed and whacked the rusty hood with the tire iron he held, then kicked the flat tire on the dilapidated jeep he had been driving. It was just his damned luck that the damned spare was flat as well, and his cell phone was dead as a doornail. He checked his watch, muttering under his breath. He was already late to the rendezvous with Cougar in Four Corners and he didn’t fancy a 16 klick jog in the dark. 

The whole damned day had been a bust. The lead that he had found on Max had been bullshit and they were already two days late as well for the meet-up with Clay and the others in Santa Fe. He sighed, rubbed tired eyes and tried to decide if he wanted to haul his laptop along on the long walk. The only sign of life he had seen for the past fifty miles had been a few cows. The last house he had passed was at least twenty miles back. 

As he started to lean into the back of the jeep for his backpack, something shiny on the blacktop caught his eye. Puzzled, he bent and picked up the object. It was a sharp metal caltrop—the type designed to disable vehicles. Looking around he realized there were more scattered across the road. Hair rising on the nape of his neck, he whirled at a whisper of sound behind him, arm automatically flung up with the tire iron in hand in a defensive move. A rock hard fist caught him in the jaw and he staggered back against the jeep, white stars exploding in his field of vision, the last thing he saw before he lost consciousness was a grinning human face with a mouth full of too many razor sharp teeth.

Kate eyed the well-built blond with unconcealed interest. She and her nest had already fed, snatching a young Hispanic couple from an isolated rest stop on the main road, feeding quickly and leaving their drained cadavers in a drainage ditch. The vampires had been stymied in their search for Sam Winchester tonight. Four Corners had been crawling with alert, well-armed men and women that reeked of ‘other’, like the wolf man they held captive back at the nest. Reluctantly they had withdrawn, prowling on the outskirts of town, unwilling to take on a well-armed tribe of creatures as strong as themselves. 

As reluctant as she was to abandon Winchester’s scent trail, she wasn’t stupid. The younger brother would come in search of the elder, she was certain, and she could wait. Instead they had snatched a scrawny teen from an isolated filling station as he gassed up a dilapidated blue jeep to stock their larder. The nest would need blood for the upcoming fight and in the meantime perhaps she would add a new member to her minions, as well as additional stock for the larder. She ran a considering fingertip over the bull tattoo on the unconscious man’s well muscled bicep. She had no blonds in her nest. Hell, maybe she would add the Winchesters to her harem as well—they were very handsome men, and their father was already dead, freeing her of the immediate blood debt to avenge Luther. It would be a delicious irony to turn his sons.

“Bring him!” 

She snapped at her brood, and watched in satisfaction as they scrambled to obey, lifting the young man and carrying him to where their battered, non-descript vehicle was hidden behind a cottonwood grove. She glanced into the jeep, saw nothing of interest to steal, and strode off after them to their hidden vehicle, pleased that they had stopped to check their ‘trap’ on this isolated, secondary road. Licking her lips, she wondered what the Wolf man back at the nest would taste like. He certainly smelled delicious, his blood musky and rich as the echo of Concord grapes in a fine cordial.

********************************************************************************************

Back in Four Corners, Carlos Alvarez sat with his back firmly against the wall at a corner of the bar in the Saloon, an untouched shot glass at his elbow. He felt, quite literally like a cat in room full of rocking chairs—or wolves. Their scent was cloying and heavy in his sensitive nostrils and he was breathing through his mouth to resist the urge to sneeze, his skin prickling and the hair on the nape of his neck rising. It didn’t help that his partner was hours late to the rendezvous and had not checked in.

It had been a long time since Cougar had been among so many shifters. In fact he couldn’t remember ever seeing so many in one place. His clan were solitary folk, content for the most part to keep to themselves deep in the Sierra Madre mountain ranges of Oaxaca. So far, he didn’t think they had noticed they had a gato in their midst, but he didn’t really want to push his luck. These wolves were restless and increasingly uneasy. Something had upset the pack. The majority of them milled around the far corner of the bar where a black clad cowboy sat, face half hidden in shadow, obviously the alpha of this remote pack. He was so preoccupied with busily trying to keep an eye on the coming and going of the wolves that he missed the sharp look and the discrete sniff the pretty bartender gave him as she polished glasses nearby.

As Cougar watched, a slender woman with a lovely face hurriedly approached the Alpha’s corner and spoke quickly in the ear of what was obviously his SIC, a tall, mustached man whose handsome face turned grim at her news and caused the impatiently listening Alpha to flow to his feet, his pack instinctively gathering around him. He followed their gaze to the door, where a dark haired young wolf wearing a black leather jacket stood, scowling across the room, shoulders rounded and fists clenched. He looked mad enough to take on the entire pack.

With their attention fixed on the new wolf, now was a good time to vamos. Cougar slid off his stool intending to slink unnoticed out the back exit only to come face to face with a short, handsome Hispanic man with very white teeth and a dazzling smile. He smelled unmistakably of wolf.

“Hola, gato. Where are you headed this fine evening?”

 

Jensen woke with a pounding headache and a piece of straw up his left nostril, agitating his nascent hay fever something fierce. He snorted, pawed groggily at his itching nose and cautiously opened his eyes to find three interested faces peering solemnly down at him. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, blinked again and blurrily looked from one handsome face to the other. Wow, if this was one of those dreams, the kind with the male models, shouldn’t they all be naked? And in a nice king sized bed with silk sheets instead of a bed of itchy straw? Also, where the hell were his glasses so he could actually appreciate this?

Green Eyes snorted at the bemused expression on his face and turned to Blue Eyes and spoke, 

“Told you he was only knocked out. He looks military and all the jarheads I know have thick skulls.” 

Blue Eyes nodded, still regarding Jake with interest, sinfully handsome face tilted curiously and spoke in a soft, raspy voice.

“He smells like cat.”

The third, a teen male with bright, whiskey brown eyes just frowned suspiciously down at him with a blatant sniff that wrinkled his pert nose.

“He smells like cat pee.”

“Hey! I do NOT smell like cat pee!” 

Jensen tried to discreetly sniff himself just to be sure and Green Eyes gave another snort of amusement, while Blue Eyes gave him a shy grin, ducked his shaggy head and chuckled softly. Brown Eyes wrinkled his nose at him again. Blue Eyes spoke again.

“No. Not cat pee. Cat. Shifter.”

At that calm statement, Jensen sat up cautiously, only now realizing he and his new buds were locked in a huge freaking cage and apparently being held in a barn somewhere if all the musty straw and the faint aroma of old cow manure was anything to go by. The memory of being bashed earlier came flooding back and he winced at a particularly painful throb radiating from his jaw. Carefully he reached up to probe the swollen knot on his jawbone. He eyed his fellow captives, suddenly feeling a hell of a lot more alert. If this cute naked guy could smell Cougar on him it meant only one thing—he was a shifter too. 

The handsome green-eyed stud in denim and leather snorted, reading his expression and held up his hands, gun calloused palms out.

“One hundred percent human here, buddy.” 

Brown Eyes flailed a hand up in solidarity, yelping as he banged his elbow on the cage bars.

“Me too.”

Dean jerked his chin towards Vin, who shrugged and spoke softly, “I am Lupini.”

After a short round of introductions, Jensen straightened, fascinated and pleased to meet another shapeshifter despite the circumstances and burning with curiosity. Cougar was so close mouthed about his people that he had yet to crack under Jensen’s curiosity. When he got fed up with Jensen’s questions he just distracted him with food, computer games or sex. Jensen flushed at the memory of that last ‘distraction.’

“I’m human too. You probably smell my partner, Cougar.”

“Cougar?” Dean arched a brow and Vin gave him a smug look, pleased to be right. “Your partner is a cat shapeshifter named Cougar?” His deep voice was incredulous. The kid, Stiles, just snorted in amusement.

Jensen chuckled.

“Actually his name is Carlos. Cougar is a nickname he picked up in the Army. He’s a Long Range Weapons Specialist.”

Seeing Vin’s puzzled look, Dean translated “It means he’s a sniper.”

Tanner nodded in recognition. He knew what a sniper was. Chris was teaching him to shoot on the ranch and said Vin was one of the best natural shots he had ever seen. Vin didn’t care much for the scent of cordite or the loud sounds that firearms made though.

Jensen sat up and peered around, quickly noting their prison and surroundings. He could see faint light through the boards nailed over the windows and under the door. There were a series of large swaying lumps suspended from the ceiling beams farther in the gloom of the barn and it took him a few minutes of blinking and knuckling his eyes to realize they were hammocks, each with a sleeping individual. 

Following his gaze, Dean spoke up grimly.

“They’re vampires. This is their nest and this—he reached out and rapped a steel bar with his bruised knuckles—is their larder.” Seeing Jensen’s incredulous look, he waved a hand, indicating the tour of them. “And we’re dinner when they wake up this evening.”

Jensen sat back with a huff. He had heard whispers of vampires, but never encountered any and had hoped they were mainly legend, but if shapeshifters existed it was a pretty good bet that vampires did too.

“Well, shit.”

Vin gave a small chuff of agreement and Dean nodded sourly. The kid, Stiles, suddenly spoke up,

“You know something, guys? To eat us, they have to get us out of this cage first and our friends are going to be looking for us…”

Vin smirked and Jensen leaned forward with interest and the four captives huddled and put their heads together and murmured softly, even as the hammocks in the far shadows of the barn began to sway and rock as their occupants began to stir as the sun sank below the horizon.

 

It took them a couple of hours to get their shit together, but with the information provided by Sam Winchester and the aid of the cat shifter Alvarez, and the lone Hale wolf, the Four Corners pack finally narrowed down locations and picked up the scent of the vampires. The pack had split up and quickly and methodically criss-crossed the town, locating first Hale’s friend’s jeep at the gas station on the outskirts of town, and then picked up the trail afresh at the secondary road trap where they found Jensen’s vehicle carelessly abandoned at the side of the road, door still open. The scent of Jake’s blood had caused Cougar to snarl in rage and bite back a furious yowl. The shifted wolves criss –crossed the road and sniffed, then the big black Hale wolf gave a snarl and surged like a shot up a narrow, nearly hidden dirt track that led off from the blacktop. The other wolves paused only long enough for their Alpha’s grim nod and followed, stifling yelps of excitement at Larabee’s low growl of command. Sam and Cougar jogged after the tall blond man. Even in human form Larabee was as agile and fast as his fully shifted pack.

“We’re close. Scent is fresh. We go in quiet. “ He said over his shoulder, white teeth flashing in a wide grin that morphed into a snarl of anticipation.

Sam nodded, and hitched the strap of his duffle up more securely, his other hand dropping down to check the handle of the razor sharp machete strapped to his waist. He fully intended to decapitate any bloodsucker that had laid an undead hand on his brother. He shook his head, never in his life had he ever pictured himself running with a pack of shifters!

Beside him Cougar hissed and cracked his neck, feeling his fangs and claws straining to drop, his skin twitching and the hair on his head and body raising as it prepared to shift. He was more than ready to rip the head off of any vampire foolish enough to cross his path.

They found the old auction barn, just as the blood red sun dropped below the horizon, and surrounded it swiftly. Cougar eeled out of his clothes and morphed into a lean, tawny cat before they hit the ground. He exchanged a wordless glance with Larabee and ran soundlessly up to the barn and scaled the wall and slipped into the gaping maw of the loft. 

Sam unsheathed his machete, tucked a couple of ash stakes in his belt and checked the pistol in his shoulder holster and watched as Larabee discarded his shirt and boots. The Alpha did not shift, but Sam felt his skin crawl as the man’s teeth and nails suddenly morphed into sharp, deadly weapons. The huge gray Buffalo wolf, Josiah trotted silently over and chuffed softly to his Alpha, who nodded in response and murmured something back too low for Sam’s human hearing to pick up. 

Larabee turned to him and spoke softly, a wicked grin on his face.

“They’re inside and all alive, and from what I can hear giving the vamps hell. They made the mistake of putting them all together in the same cage!” 

The Hale wolf, who slinked silently out of the shadows after circling the barn, causing Sam to startle, gave an audible snort. Sam gave him a look of shared commiseration. If this Stiles kid was anything like Dean, the vamps were probably already regretting snatching them. 

Larabee gave them both another evil smile. 

“You boys ready to raise some hell?”

 

Inside the barn, things were not going so well for the hungry vampires. Kate stood, exasperated, hands on hips, in the light of the battery-powered lanterns, snarling at her minion’s rather ineffective attempts to drag the captives out of the larder. 

“Get in there, you idiot! Grab him by the throat! I want the blond first!” She shoved one of her men back into the noisy fray at the open door of the cage. 

The wolf guarding the opening was busily snarling and ripping her best man’s left arm off, while another vampire crawled away, bleeding heavily, his throat torn nearly out. A hard roundhouse kick from Winchester to a third’s face had the vampire squealing in pain and reeling back on his ass, clutching his smashed nose as the blood spurted sluggishly. A fourth flunkey almost made it in far enough to grab the skinny teen, but came howling back out, clawing at his smoking, burning eyes after the boy flung some kind of black powder in them and muttered something under his breath. The fifth made the mistake of getting in too close and Jensen and Winchester grabbed him in tandem, yanked him into the cage and proceeded to punch and kick the shit out of him with their steel-toed combat boots, while the kid whooped and cheered them on and did a little flailing dance in the straw, a crazy smile on his mole speckled face.

Kate snarled and whirled towards the bales where Winchester’s weapons lay. A few well-placed bullets from the pearl handled Colt would do the trick and they would feed well. She would save Dean for last, and make him watch as she dealt with the others. She never made it across the barn, a low moaning growl sounded above her head and she looked up into the snarling visage of a yellow eyed cougar a split second before he leapt straight into her face, a loud roar momentarily paralyzing her in place. 

As she went down under a hard muscled tangle of savage teeth and claws, she was vaguely aware of both sets of barn doors cracking open under an onslaught of howling, furry bodies as a flood of wolves poured in at Cougar’s signal. The Larabee pack had arrived and they were pissed. She caught a glimpse of Sam Winchester’s tall, shaggy headed form striding in behind them, machete in hand, accompanied by a lean blond man, but she was too busy dying for the final time to really pay attention.

By the time Sam made it into the barn, there wasn’t much left to do. The wolves had decimated the nest of vampires so swiftly and efficiently that Sam didn’t even get the chance to swing his blade once. Ruefully, he sheathed it and went to retrieve his whooping brother from the cage, where he and a well-muscled blond man had apparently stomped a bloodsucker to death and where now busily high fiving a laughing teenager and doing a victory jig. 

The Hale wolf fell into step beside him, spitting out a crushed tibia, boot still attached as he did. The wolf took one look at the spastic kid inside the cage and gave an exasperated chuff, but his bushy tail was wagging involuntarily when the boy caught sight of him and came flailing out to embrace him, a incandescent smile on his face.

“Derek!”

Sam grinned when a tawny form pushed past them in a beeline and proceeded to pounce on the blond soldier and sniff and wash him thoroughly, purring raspily as his rough tongue scraped over the laughing man’s face.

“Aw, Cougs, no! Damn, vamp breath! Vamp breath! Argh!”

Dean grinned cockily at him, no indication that he had just been held hostage for almost 48 hours by a nest of bloodsucking fiends, at all visible to his younger brother.

“Sammy! About time you showed up!”

Sam sputtered and gave him a rough hug, before backing off prepared to whack him on the back of the head for being a ‘idjit’, when a lean hand caught his arm and he found himself staring into a pair of calm, cobalt blue eyes.

“Don’t hit him, he has a concussion.” The young wolf said solemnly, before turning to step into Larabee’s open arms.

The Winchester brothers watched open mouthed as the Alpha and Vin embraced and kissed passionately, neither apparently giving a damn that they were naked and spattered with vampire blood and gore. 

They both rocked on their feet as big hands slapped them jovially on the shoulders and they turned to face the beaming mustached Beta of the Larabee pack, stark naked as most of the wolves now were as they shifted back to their human shapes. The big man beamed proudly at his Alpha and his mate.

“Aw, still as bad as honeymooners! Ain’t love grand?”

The big wolf watched proudly as the embrace became even more heated. There was nothing like a successful hunt and battle to get Lupini blood up! He grinned as the Winchesters flushed and tried to look everywhere but at the embracing couple and the naked bodies surrounding them. Humans were so damned modest. It was downright cute. 

Buck took pity on them and steered them out of the barn.

“You boys look like you could use a beer! I’m buying! Come on Josiah!”

He hollered across the barn to where the big priest was calmly supervising the collection of what bits remained of the former nest of vampires. The old barn would make a nice pyre tonight and some prayers and Nate’s herbs scattered with salt and iron shavings among the corpses would insure that nothing evil arose from the ashes to torment the living ever again.

Cougar and Jensen scrambled to follow, Cougar pausing to shift and grab his clothing and weapons. Behind them they could hear the Hale boy rumbling an exasperated “No, Stiles! You’re still underage!” and the boy’s whining protests. Jensen wondered if it was beer they were talking about or something a tad more intimate. 

He stepped up his pace a bit, not really wanting to find out. There was quite a bit of nudity and embracing going on around them. He wondered if the shifters were so hot blooded after every battle or if this was a special occasion. He had about a thousand questions. He paused when a shapely, blood splattered naked redhead winked coyly at him, only to feel Cougar clamp a possessive hand on his neck and steer him firmly away. He grinned, figuring he was about to find out.

 

Sam and Dean set out early the next day, despite pounding hangovers and the remnants of Dean’s concussion. The Larabee pack doctors had carefully examined and treated all of the captives and a few bruises and mild concussions were all they had to worry about. Sam was driving Baby for a change, Dean lolling in the seat next to him, sunglasses clamped firmly on his face. Sam knew he would doze off within minutes of hitting the open highway. 

The Winchesters were headed back to their base in Kansas, determined to find a way to retrieve Benny Lafitte from Purgatory. Dean’s painful, drunken confession last night that Benny was his only real friend and that he missed him desperately, had sparked Sam’s determination to help get the big vampire back. After all, Sam owed him for covering his back while he escaped Purgatory. Josiah had loaned him several books to read that should prove helpful.

The cat shifter and the soldier had left immediately after a shared drink with the others. Apparently they were late with a meet-up with their mercenary friends in Santa Fe and didn’t want risk a certain Colonel’s wrath any longer. Sam suspected the laconic cat had had enough of being surrounded by wolves to last him for a while. He wished the shy cat had been willing to share more info about rare gato shifters.

The Hale wolf and the Stilinski boy had also left last night after only a couple of shared beers at the Saloon. They had a long drive to California and Stile’s father was impatiently waiting for his son’s return and the lone Hale wolf was determined to remain on the Sheriff’s good side. Much to the shy wolf’s horror the teen had gleefully announced to the entire bar last night that they were now officially ‘courting’, then spent an hour happily discussing werewolf courtship rituals with anyone (Sam and Josiah) who would listen. Sam suspected he would be getting a shitload of notes sent regularly from California from now on. Apparently the Winchesters now shared tentative friendship bonds with both the Hale pack and the Larabee pack and it was nice to come out ahead of the cosmic game for a change.

Sam turned Baby east and they headed for home. He grinned when barely a mile down the road, Dean’s purring snore rose from beside him.

FINI

02/04/2017


End file.
